This was meant to be a holiday!

Ok, it's official. The novelty has worn off and travelling is no picnic! Especially when you find yourself in a new city every 3 days!

Amsterdam was an interesting experience - I joined up with a completely new busabout crew and, since everyone tends only to sleep on the bus, didn't really meet any of them before arriving. The lovely, brand new, overly sterile Stayokay Zeeburg put us in all completely different rooms so I still hadn't met anyone by the time we left, except for a West Virginian girl Kirsten from my room - I was lucky to have found her, too! Plenty of people were in rooms by themselves... So while I managed to see a lot in Amsterdam it was kind of lonely because it was just me and Kirsten for 3 whole days!

We wanted to get straight down to business the night we arrived so we tried to get to the Anne Frank House, but just missed it and went to the Sex Museum instead. That was certainly an experience... but for 3 Euro it was hardly one to be missed... we were in stitches the whole time! Pronographic photos from over a century ago, S&M, urinal fetishes, you name it and it was there!

First thing next morning we did the Anne Frank House and while the story of Anne Frank herself was moving, it was the reality of her father surviving the whole ordeal and having to confront these diaries and make decisions about how to get Anne's story out there must have been so heart-wrenching. I can't imagine how anyone would even begin to deal with something like that. Being away from mum and dad always makes something like that seem more real too, but then I'm just emotionally unstable ;-)

The Heineken museum was an intersting experience... more like a mini theme park than a museum, but we got 3 beers during the tour for our 11 euro so it was probably even cheaper than going to a bar! It was kinda cute! That was really just killing time before our bike tour though, and we also spent an hour or two sitting by the canals eating lunch, watching the surprisingly good looking dutch boys riding past on their bikes and boats, drinking beer and smoking who-knows-what! It's a littl too chaotic a city to really appeal to me but damn it would be a fun place to spend a week with mates. It has something to offer to anyone and everything.

The bike tour sped us through the city so I was glad we had already got our bearings, then out into the countryside where we got a 5 second presentation on cheese making and clog making by the wierdest guy I've ever seen, and got some cool chliche`d photos of windmills and giant clogs. Not sure it was really worth it just for the photos, that may have been all I got out of it!

That night Kirindy got into Amsterdam (the only one left from my previous busabout bunch - we should have been actually travelling together had she not missed the bus from Munch, hahahaha) so we did the pub crawl together. No exciting stories but a big night with lots of dancing and some overly keen guys... we bailed, only to find out it was the last place anyway. The bus trip the next day to Berlin was NOT enjoyable, but I still managed to meet some nice people, finally, to hang around with in Berline!